Dark Night of the Soul
by devilisinthedetails
Summary: Wyldon is worried about Prince Roald's reported snappishness. Set during Lady Knight.


Dark Night of the Soul

Wyldon could hear the watchers on Fort Mastiff's walls call out the hour, three after midnight, and knew that he should've been asleep. After all, he had shooed Owen off to bed at least two hours ago when purple bags began to sag under the boy's gray eyes,but instead he remained at the desk in his office, scowling down at at a personal, not included in military reports, letter General Vanget had sent him.

General Vanget wrote that he feared Prince Roald was getting restless at not being allowed a chance to truly fight for his country and people because His Highness had apparently lashed out at a couple of people at Northwatch. Wyldon might have dismissed this as sensitivity on the part of those Roald had snapped at and paranoia on Vanget's—after all, everyone's nerves were frayed to a thin thread in a war zone—if it weren't for the fact that he could count on one hand the number of times he had heard the mild-mannered, ever-courteous Prince Roald snap at anyone. Prince Roald snapping at a few people in a matter of weeks when he might normally have taken years to reach that quota was the equivalent of several tirades from anybody else.

If what Vanget said was true, and Wyldon saw no benefit for him in lying about the Crown Prince's mood, Prince Roald needed someone to talk to him before he did something stir-crazy, as Vanget phrased it, since impulsivity did run like blue eyes through the blood of the Conte line.

Massaging his throbbing temples, Wyldon mused over the fact that Vanget, who had dispatched the prince to Mastiff as a distraction and an opportunity to stretch his legs, wanted Wyldon to speak with Roald, but Wyldon wondered if he was the right man for the duty.

He might have trained Roald as a page, but he had learned the heartbreakingly hard way when Joren and Vinson had failed their Ordeals that he did not actually know the boys he had taught. Yet if he didn't try to counsel Roald, the prince might do something the whole realm would regret that put him in peril. It was Wyldon's duty to attempt to advise him, and, he thought with a wry jerk of his jaw, that worst thing Roald could do was snap at him…

Leaving his office, Wyldon climbed the stairs that led to the ramparts where Roald was captaining the watch.

"Milord!" A pair of soldiers froze in mid-march to salute to Wyldon as he stepped onto the ramparts. They were bundled in cloaks, hats, and gloves because even April that far north meant chilling nights and howling winds after the sun set.

"At ease." Wyldon returned the salute, and the rigid postures of the sentries relaxed. "Report."

"All is quiet and all is calm, milord," answered the senior of the two soldiers, and Wyldon waved them on.

As the pair continued their circuit of the ramparts, Wyldon noticed blazing behind them an azure ball of flame—spelled to provide warmth and light until dawn doubtlessly—trailing at their waists. That was presumably the prince's handiwork, and, staring down the ramparts, Wyldon could see more blue globes that marked other guards at their posts.

Somehow the sight of the flames and the wind whistling in his ears reminded him of how the rain had pounded through the forest leaves and the breeze had screamed in the trees on a camping trip they had taken during the wet spring of Roald's third year as a page.

Nobody had looked eager to begin the battle to coax fire from the pile of damp wood they had gathered because it was the only kind available, but everyone had known better than to grumble in his hearing (and his hearing was always a greater distance than they imagined), so Wyldon was surprised when Roald had spoken softly, "My lord?"

When Wyldon had arched an eyebrow, Roald had twiddled his thumbs to suggest magic and asked, "If I may?"

As impatient for warmth as anyone else, Wyldon had relented, waving a hand in brusque consent and commanding crisply, "Go on then. Don't keep us waiting, Your Highness."

Intensity had flashed in Prince Roald's eyes like the northern lights that were supposed to glow in the skies way up in Scanra, and, seconds later, the wood had sparked into hot, blue flames that caused Seaver, who had been standing too close to the wood when it ignited, to gasp and leo back onto Merric's toes…

Wyldon was so lost in his memory that he almost missed the sight of Prince Roald leaning on the wall a few feet from him, staring out at the stars, which were bright and sharp as polished swords in the clear northern night. Being so close to the stars that it felt as if you could touch them if you dared to reach out a hand was one of the few pleasures to be found in this harsh climate in the middle of a bloody war, Wyldon thought, but because he didn't have time to waste admiring nature, he asked abruptly as he joined the prince, "A word, Your Highness?"

"You've been ordering me about since I was ten, my lord." Roald's tone made it impossible to tell whether his statement was meant as a compliment or a criticism. "I think it's about time you just called me 'Roald.' 'Your Highness' sounds more like a mountain than a person."

Wyldon should have felt honored—he wasn't sure that any Cavall had been granted the privilege of addressing royalty on a first name basis—but instead a barrier rose within him. Fief Cavall bordered Conte, and Wyldon had been brought up with the mantra that good fences made good neighbors. The Cavalls respected the Contes and owed them fealty, but they weren't friends. They did their duty but they kept their distance unlike the Naxens, the Queenscoves, and the Leganns. The Contes could have their élan while the Cavalls remained grounded in the fertile soil of their fief. The Contes could cling to the cold comfort of their crowns while the Cavalls had their dogs and horses that could love a master back.

"Then you must call me 'Wyldon.'" Wyldon delivered the traditional response rather stiffly.

"That doesn't feel natural." Roald was spinning a blue blaze between his palms so rapidly that it was like watching a miniature world in motion and Wyldon dizzied at the notion.

"Now you know how I feel," Wyldon countered and took advantage of the fact that Roald was wrong-footed to press, "I had a letter from General Vanget. He writes you were getting snappish with people at Northwatch."

"I've snapped at people less in a month than General Vanget has in a day." Roald's chin lifted, and Wyldon saw that some of the soft-spokenness that had defined Roald as a page had hardened into sharp edges and stubbornness. Wyldon could see the king he would become but grieved for the loss of the boy he had known. "He's the last man who should be gossiping about my temper."

"It's not gossip, Roald." Wyldon folded his arms across his chest. "He's worried about you. Your snappishness makes people afraid you're going to chop their heads off. It's bad for morale."

"Morale." Roald's slight smile was tinged with more bitterness than humor. "We all know that's what I'm here for since I'm not allowed to fight. Morale and magic, that's all I'm good for in this war."

"Your duty is to secure the kingdom's future by your survival, and the rest of us have a duty to protect your life with ours." Wyldon was implacable because Roald was Tortall's future, and, however much Wyldon disapproved of King Jonathan's and Queen Thayet's progressive policies, which he thought were rocking the boat so forcefully they all risked a plunge into a frigid ocean, he couldn't deny that the monarchs had groomed Roald for rule well. They had raised a son concerned with his responsibilities, not his privileges, and devoted to duty rather than pleasure. Since he was a page, Roald's focus had always been on doing what was expected of him, not whatever he wanted to do. Roald would be a good king who could lead the country to an era of peace and prosperity, Wyldon believed it in his bones. "Your life matters more to the country than anything you could do in this war."

"Don't worry about me. I'll do my duty." Roald's eyes burned with barely tamed blue fire, but his face was serene, passion simmering under a cool exterior, a strong undertow beneath still water, and Wyldon could feel the magnetism he had inherited from his charismatic parents. Determined but never rebellious even now, Roald vowed, "I want to do something that's different, something that matters, something that sets the whole world on its ear, but I won't. I'll do what's expected of me even if it's the hardest thing I'll ever have to do. You've my word on that."

"I believe in you, Roald." Wyldon inclined his head in a bow that formed his acknowledgement of the faith he had felt in Roald and the future Roald could create ever since he had witnessed firsthand how Roald had navigated page training. Roald had been scrupulously fair—favoring nobody even in small affairs such as with whom he ate dinner—in addition to being so polite that even Master Oakbridge would be challenged to detect a flaw in his manners and committed to his myriad royal obligations. "I always have, and I always will."

Surprise flickered across Roald's features like lightning darting over a summer sky, and Wyldon noted with some pride that he was still able to catch his students by surprise—he hadn't lost his touch yet. Then a mask of seriousness settled across Roald's face as he bowed his head in return. "I thank you for your faith and pledge never to disappoint it."

Wyldon could feel the ties of fealty binding them together as they stood on the ramparts watching the inky black sky fade into a dark pre-dawn purple that promised a cold morning after another long and quiet night on the northern front, but because morning was coming for him and Roald, Wyldon wouldn't complain.

"My lord, how do you bear being separated from your wife?" Roald breaking the silence between them with such a private question took Wyldon aback.

"Because I know that she'll be there for me when I come back." Aware of how hard Roald had fallen for his beautiful and graceful Yamani princess who might have looked like a porcelain doll but could converse insightfully on almost any topic, Wyldon added, "As Princess Shinkokami will be there for you."

"Of course." There was a sardonic twist to Roald's tone, and Wyldon realized that Roald had interpreted his remark as a comment on womanly weakness rather than womanly strength and dismissed him as a stodgy conservative, which made Wyldon resent for possibly the thousandth time the era he lived in where what he thought of as his reasonably moderate beliefs and reverence for tradition was seen as intractably conservative. "The womenfolk will just wait for their menfolk to return from war since everyone knows women have nothing better to do than wait for us to ride back from the battlefield."

"No, everyone knows that women have more than enough work to keep them occupied until the men come back," Wyldon corrected tersely, thinking of the letters Vivienne in which she had mentioned the hospitals Princess Shinkokami had built for wounded soldiers, the charitable funds she had raised for the families of the wounded and slain, and the sewing parties she hosted in her chambers to make blankets and clothes for refugees, which were apparently a coveted invitation among the nobility for the opportunity to listen to Yamani poetry and music. There was no questioning that Princess Shinkokami was supporting the war effort in every way that could be required of a future queen and busying herself with projects that nobody could regard as controversial. She was the perfect princess to Roald's perfect prince. No wonder Roald was besotted with his betrothed. "They don't have time to waste pouting when they should be doing their duty and would think less of us if we sulked in their absence."

"I would never do anything so undignified as sulk." Roald straightened his spine.

"Of course not." Wyldon bit back a snort because it did not due to make a mockery of royalty, no matter how ridiculous royalty acted when standing on pride. "Nobody would ever say otherwise."


End file.
